It's strange that in the original plan it seems like they were going to have all the crypt maps clumped together, and a couple of mercenary ships one after another. In the finished game the themes often varied wildly between each major location, which is part of what made it such a magical adventure.Also, thinking about how in the final game you teleport from the sky island to Velora Pass, I wonder if the devs were pretending all the cut locations are still in the Unreal world, but the player just teleports past them? If not, couldn't they have just made the sky lift take you down to Velora Pass?

As I said in some previous posts, it was rumored that there was a plan to make the cut section part of a standalone shareware pack. A different campaign where you would play as a male character. I'm going to detail that the moment I reach ALFA 62.From the game's POV, all the cut locations wouldn't exist but the novels do exist instead. So you can easily pretend all that cut locations being on the planet. I personally ignore RTNP being canon, though the UNBIBLE mentioned an Abyss as a bonus pack location (pretty sure Legend had some notes/resources of Unreal's development).

Serpent Canyon and Nali Castle were a single map once, only to be separated for performance issues. The map was just known as Nali Castle. Even earlier, Demonlord's Lair was also connected to them too.

In early versions of the map there was no starting dock. You would automatically start in the cave river, swimming. This is because of how Dasa/Underflow were to end - you would fall in a water hole and its strong current would push you to the next map.

The river is less hazardous than the first Nyleve pool you come across. You can finely swim all the way to the end and you will only encounter a few Devilfish along the way. No BiterFish. The middle cave part is dark though and might require a FlashLight.

Early versions of the map housed a Giant Manta at the end of the middle cave.

The map contains the Pirates of Na Pali easter egg. Just shoot those two torches on the walls of the dock to trigger the light actor that illuminates the easter egg picture in the middle cave.

At the end of the middle cave there's a torch pillar... but strangely it has no torch at all unlike the ones seen before it. Reason is because the torch doesn't fit there and would go through the cave brushes.

One part of the windmill's exterior walls has a BSP hole that's covered by a plant decoration.

Nali Castle (NaliC.unr)

Serpent Canyon and Nali Castle were a single map once, only to be separated for performance issues. The map was just known as Nali Castle. Even earlier, Demonlord's Lair was also connected to them too.

The FlyBy map obviously lacks the interior of the castle and many details such as the Nali hut or all the brushes in the castle's courtyard.

The FlyBy map has a balcony where the castle tower is located, with brushes, barrels and a Nali that do not appear at all in the playable Nali Castle itself (it cannot be even reached). The door there in the FlyBy would awkwardly lead to the spiral staircase.

The Giant Gasbag first (and only) appears in this map in the final version of the game. For reasons unknown, killing him unlocks the doors to the prison. In early versions of the map, there was a Stone Titan instead of the Giant Gasbag, making the tower battle several times harder.

The entrance bridge portion housed a Giant Manta in early versions of the map.

The entrance bridge portion which leads to the castle's main gate has some grate windows on its exterior walls, meaning that there would be accessible areas below the floor.

If you don't kill the first Krall in time, he'll enter the castle and lock you outside by closing down the gate. The only way to enter the castle is to find the secret sewer entrance in the lake below (right hand side of the castle bridge, and you must shoot the wooden bars to break them). Watch out at the Biterfish. It's also possible to climb the rocks in order to reach the balcony above the sewer entrance.Note that the sewer chamber (which leads to the corridor with the prison/dungeon doors) can only be accessed through the underwater passage, however there's nothing inside the chamber itself. Entering the sewer tunnel will also trigger the Wargate's action/boss songsection and you'll be hearing it all the way until the Giant Gasbag is dead.

Shooting the church's bell triggers always a bell sound but the bell itself is just a standard brush and doesn't move.

Various areas of the castle appear to be empty or devoid of details. It's unknown if Shane really had to rush for making the map reach a fully playable state.

After the doors that need to be opened by reading the church's book, you see a small window on the wall on your left. This window doesn't connect to any known place in the castle, and a light comes out of it.

One of the two red torches that illuminate the front of the castle does not have the fire brushes.

The elevator to the Giant Gasbag is known to have the default Unreal texture, a bug caused by later Unreal patches. This is fixed in U227.

The castle courtyard has a sign, however there's no translator message attached to it.

There's a bunch of unused torch brushes outside the playable world, next to the underground prisons. Only visible in the editor.

Next to the exit, there's, outside of the playable world (only visible in the editor), another teleporter actor to the exit. It would lead always to the next map but has a weird tag called "Nalicentry". This teleporter actor was the one used in early versions of the map (like the Unreal 1998 beta one).

There's no point stopping the Skaarj Berserker in the dungeon from decapitating the Nali (other than that, it's really hard to stop him doing so).

In early versions of the map, triggering the chopping axe in the dungeon would also show the "Chop! Chop!" message every time.

One of the two captured Nali in the dungeon will be always scared of you no matter what when you free him from his cell. He'll run away to the balcony where the Skaarj Berserker spawns, so he can be ignored.

The other captured Nali will be instead thankful and will lead you to his hut. He's the only one who can activate the moving platform from the castle side, even though you can freely reach the other side by walking on the iron line (and you can call the platform from the other side by just standing next to the edge, also). Saving the Nali from the shuttle bombs is pointless and very hard to do, not to mention you can be killed by the explosions too. The only real useful item there is in the hut is a Seed, anyway.

Early versions of Nali Castle had a WarpZoneInfo at the end of the level with a "gargoyle" tag. This pretty much confirms that the Warlord originated from the Gargoyle creature.

Demonlord's Lair (NaliLord.unr)

Demonlord's Lair was at first connected to Nali Castle.

The Warlord first appears in this map. In older versions of Unreal, it was planned for the Warlord to make quick appearances in some maps, like Nyleve and Bluff.

The Warlord teleports away when defeated. It's possible to quickly kill him by shooting the giant rock stalactite above his position (without getting spotted of course). The stalactite damage actually depends on the speed of the game - the slower it is, the more damage the stalactite deals. Most of the time it's always instant victory for you but be careful otherwise.

It's unknown how birds made their way to this cave.

In early versions of Unreal, the Warlord was going to die there instead. He was also MUCH MORE powerful - able to shoot every single time three homing rockets with big splash damage, making dodging extremely hard. Easily the strongest retail Unreal enemy ever conceived.

Last edited by UBerserker on 29 Apr 2016, 16:45, edited 1 time in total.

Crater.umx (originally called Newmca6) has an unused tension songsection, which seems to sound more fitting for a Crypt-based map.

Demon Crater was originally known as FHub7 as of the Unreal 1998 beta. However, even earlier, in late 1997, it was just known as FHub4. Apparently the original FHub4, FHub5 and FHub6 weren't made at that point yet (ending Soledad would lead to Crater instead); remember that in 1997 it was also planned for the beta cut section to be a separate campaign, so it would have made sense for Demon Crater to be the "fourth" hub map.

Geographically-wise, Demon Crater is all located above Demonlord's Lair. Its geometry would likely collide with Nali Castle.

Demon Crater is the only Unreal retail map to have the Power Shield. Back in unpatched Unreal, Power Shield's charge decreased over time.

Early versions of Demon Crater had the storage area having rocky walls rather than metal ones.

The Skaarj Trooper in the MotherShip valley can be sniped/killed from the outpost's window. There isn't anything special that the Skaarj does and nothing happens if you kill him or not.

The red lights of the MotherShip come from no source at all. These lights have been also added very late in development.

The MotherShip valley has never been accessible and the basement door has never been a mover. Probably, plans to make the valley accessible were only for late development but Pancho wasn't able to implement them in time.

Earliest versions of Demon Crater had a very long electric bridge connecting the window of the outpost to the top of the MotherShip (in the crudest way possible).

Demon Crater is Pancho's only Unreal SP map without a proper outdoor section.

Last edited by UBerserker on 29 Apr 2016, 16:45, edited 1 time in total.

Extreme might stand just for the MotherShip being the last location in the game, therefore being very/EXTREMELY hard to complete. Also, just like all Inoxx's maps, it has a "X" in the map title.

The "Beg" in the maptitle stands for begin/beginning.

The Skaarj Trooper can randomly appear in any of the three corridors at the beginning of the map.

The very high pitched loud hums that are heard for very few seconds come from the laser beams - as ambient sounds. The engine doesn't seem to like this when the beams start moving and it gives up, which is why you don't hear the sounds forever anymore once you get near the beams.

MotherShip Basement is infamous for the laser beams room, where you need to figure out their pattern in order to pass through them two times. Perhaps this is the hardest part of the game in Unreal difficulty, as in there you are forced to deal with the laser beams in order to activate the panel which opens the door to the exit area.

This is the only Unreal retail map with difficulty-filtered movers and event; in this case, the laser beam room's panel ones plus the trigger to unlock the door to the exit.

In early versions of the map, the laser beams were yellow.

The laser beams only start to wave around when you're close to (and consequently inside) their room, due to a control trigger. Once you get out of the trigger's radius, the beams will go back to their default position (speed for doing so depends on their keyframes).

Last edited by UBerserker on 29 Apr 2016, 16:45, edited 1 time in total.

Originally, the main part of the Mothership was one whole map named Extreme. While Beg and End were always separated, the old Extreme consisted of Lab, Core and Gen put together (basically a reverse The Darkening), with Gen being just a different-looking Skaarj Generator room where you'd fight a Skaarj and head to the next map through the Generator itself (the Darkening's exit section wasn't made yet).

The Mothership was originally conceived to have a room with Tarydium processing machines (the Tarydium is only mentioned and directly used for the Skaarj shield experiments instead). Conceptually, the whole location was always planned to be a thing since 1996 and was started not that late as well according to a very early screenshot showing the player fighting a Big Man in a corridor resembling the prison area (look below).

At the beginning of the map there's a closed door, blocking a path which would connect to the end of ExtremeCore in the Darkening. In this case, the door is just a texture wall so it can't be opened but behind it there's a cube room containing all weapons in the game plus the Translator. The reason is unknown; plus, all these items are set to be invisible in the editor.

The Skaarj Troopers pressing the panels in the first room completely ignore you until one of the patrolling Skaarj from the nearby corridor arrives. The reason why the Skaarj are set to ignore you is to prevent immediate hostility the moment you begin the map, giving you a chance to attack them first.

The corridor connecting the first two rooms had crushing laser beams coming from the ceiling in earlier versions of the map. The ambushing Skaarj Warrior working on the nearby panel was originally accidentally killed by the trap.

The Mothership had originally Big Men (old Brutes) and Krall at certain points in development.

Regarding the prison area, the only locked energy cell that can be deactivated is the Bloblet one. Shoot something at it like a flak shell to destroy the shield.

The big Ice Skaarj is just a retextured, beefed up Berserker one. An aggressive prisoner Skaarj wasn't an actual original thing here: one of the cut Myscha maps, ALFA62, had as one of the core features a Skaarj prisoner (in this case though it was the Mercenaries who caught him) and the player had to work with him to get out of the location. Here instead he's a full crazy Skaarj whose identity and motives are unknown.

The Tarydium-charged Skaarj Berserker also first appears there. Basically a Skaarj Berserker with more health and with an orange XFX texture (the only one in the whole Mothership, as in the Darkening you encounter blue and green ones instead). According to the computer notes, the Tarydium is used to create protective body shields for the Skaarj but the experiments haven't been good enough; Skaarj under the shield effects become also frenzy and attack anybody nearby. Anyway, it appears they eventually managed to overcome the shielding issues, as the green and blue levels (superior to the orange one) were reached and the subject Skaarj were dispatched in the Mothership after the destruction of the generator (when and where this happened though? No one knows).

Mothership Lab is the only Unreal retain map to have warpzone tunnels. They are sort of broken in UT though, forcing you to manually run to the end of the warp tunnels.

This is the only Unreal retail map to have Skaarj Troopers wielding a Minigun and a Flak Cannon. The Minigun Skaarj is also your last ticket for obtaining a Minigun if you missed the weapon in the Sunspire.

The area with the insta-kill red heatwave floors and Skaarj Gunners is actually optional; you can directly warp to the Skaarj shield experimentation area and defeat the orange Skaarj to already unlock the exit. You just miss out on a lot of valuable items.

In the Skaarj shield experimentation area, there's a lone room with a panel, which upon activation caused a red silent alarm to turn on. Strangely, nothing comes out of this.

In the editor, below and outside the first room, you see Panel decos, a Moon deco and a PlayerShip deco. They were going to be used as holograms for the first room's computer panels (all the decos are found exactly below these and were pushed up and down with an attach mover) but Inoxx went for simple nonsolid panel sheets instead.

Some of the heatwave insta-kill floors do not work on scripted pawns (the green ones) - this is due to the triggers that are only set to be activated by the player pawns.

Mothership Lab appears to have been completed later than The Darkening. Same with Mothership Core.

Originally, the main part of the Mothership was one whole map named Extreme. While Beg and End were always separated, the old Extreme consisted of Lab, Core and Gen put together (basically a reverse The Darkening), with Gen being just a different-looking Skaarj Generator room where you'd fight a Skaarj and head to the next map through the Generator itself (the Darkening's exit section wasn't made yet). Krall also appeared as well.

The first Skaarj Trooper that you encounter is a rare unarmed one.

The Skaarj Officer in one of the first rooms of the map is also unarmed and he'll run to pick up the GES Bio Rifle as soon as possible.

The map contains several locked areas behind forcefields, with items and also enemies inside. These are only accessible in The Darkening.

The map features one and the last Brute of the retail Unreal campaign.

The "Core" in the map title refers directly to the Core Generator - the Skaarj Generator. The location in ExtremeCore is more of a security central of sort.

This map is infamous for the whole "ambush" section where you have to kill a bunch of progressively spawning Skaarj until the locked door to the next area is unlocked. The Skaarj do not actively chase/ambush you, they just patrol almost all the first areas in cycles.

The laser beam area sort of bugs up when you save or load a game. Other than the moving beams, you see seemingly static "twin" ones. These latter aren't actually supposed to be in the playable world and you can walk through them without any issue. It's unknown why this bug happens but it might be caused by the fast movement speed of the laser beam movers.

Skaarj Troopers in this map usually come with altered skins (Troopers and Officers having Gunner skins). There's also one armed with a Flak Cannon.

The secret Jumpboots (inside the mini-room with the wall you have to shoot, next to that huge panel in the x-shaped area) are used to reach the nearby Super Health Pack inside the alcove.

Originally, instead of being a full map, the Core Generator was part of the old Extreme (Lab+Core+Gen) and looked completely different. As seen in the Unreal 1998 beta, the generator was an all-cylinder area where you would walk on a circle shaped walkway on top of a pit with insta-kill green heatwave field, with the generator sitting in the middle of the area, unreachable at first. You had to kill a Skaarj Berserker boss on the very thin pathway (the Skaarj Berserker boss idea was eventually repurposed into the Ice Berserker one at the end of The Darkening) in order to automatically unlock a bunch of bridges that connected the circle platform to the generator. Once reached the generator, you had to wait for a platform to come down and to shoot the middle of it to go even more down, inside the generator itself. You would touch the exit leading to ExtremeEnd though, unfortunately, as the concept in the 1998 beta for the post-generator madness wasn't completed yet. Inside the generator you still had to shoot the glowing energy cores (four of them there). Once that was done, a red alarm light would light up in the generator - and nothing else was done afterwards. Probably you either had to go in a yet-to-be-developed new area or it was already planned that the darkened MotherShip was going to be a thing (however, all of the ExtremeCore's locked forcefield areas were already accessible in the old Extreme).

The SearchLight first appears in this map.

The Skaarj Generator IS NOT a generator of Skaarj! It's just the Core Generator of the MotherShip's energy power.

You do not take fall damage in this map regardless of the height. Probably something to do with the gravity-related properties in the ZoneInfo actor.

Enemies are not killed/damaged by the laser beam on top of the generator due to the trigger being only activated by player pawns.

The pre-placed Skaarj are Lord ones. The five ones that spawn are Skaarj Assassin instead.

The Warlord makes his final boss appearance in this map where he dies for real. In earlier versions of the game he was going to die already in Demonlord's Lair. Besides, his alcove might suggest that you were going to a different place after destroying the Generator, possibly before The Darkening idea was ever conceived.

The map is unique in the campaign in the sense that it's very much a DeathMatch-style arena where you have to kill monsters and do a specific objective: you can only touch the exit after destroying the Generator cores, instead of just going from point A to point B.

The Skaarj arena concept supposedly originated from The Source, which had in the Queen arena a bunch of spawning Skaarj before the Queen herself appeared.

Illumination (ExtremeDGen.unr)

"DGen" might stand for DarkGen or DestroyedGen. Probably Dark considering that's where the game is leading to.

Illumination is a special map revolving around the Generator's explosion. It's the shortest map in the game and is the only one to not have a single enemy. You can still die from the explosion though, either being crushed by the falling movers or by the explosion itself which deals 100000 or so vaporized-type damage.

Technically, after the explosion ends, you're teleported to a twin Generator area with all the Generator brushes being removed. The big blue electro sparks don't kill you there.

The door movers of the Warlord alcove have been removed.

The Generator's "cone" area is actually cut off in this map - it has a roof now. In Skaarj Generator there wasn't, you could see the actual tip of the cone instead.

Last edited by UBerserker on 30 Apr 2016, 21:06, edited 1 time in total.

Cool read as usual, Illumination is - besides the flyby intro and the final cinematic of course - the only map in the game that really acts as a cutscene only (although you can die if you do something silly of course).

UBerserker wrote:Mothership Core (ExtremeCore.unr)

This map is infamous for the whole "ambush" section where you have to kill a bunch of progressively spawning Skaarj until the locked door to the next area is unlocked. The Skaarj do not actively chase/ambush you, they just patrol almost all the first areas in cycles.

Yeah I remember the "ambush" being a bit confusing due to this lack of "active chase" going on. Actually made for some unexpected encounters... I just didn't know when there'd be no enemy left.

Nali: Magic or Telekinesis

Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

You do not take fall damage in this map regardless of the height. Probably something to do with the gravity-related properties in the ZoneInfo actor.

It is determined by ZoneTerminalVelocity property. 980 units as opposed to default 2500 value. This prevents Pawns (and be extension - PlayerPawn) from receiving falling damage, since certain amount is required to inflict it.

This popular map has been completed late in development. The Darkening combines Lab and Core, in a similar way like how the old Extreme map was. Several details appear to be removed (like some panel brushes), certain door movers have been turned into static brushes and several areas are not accessible (therefore removed). Forcefield locked areas are now accessible.

The Darkening is the only map in the Unreal campaign with a revisited and heavily modified location seen from previous levels. This is technically the second time that Inoxx does this - Terraniux had the last area from Terraniux Underground at the beginning but it was hardly changed and most of the level was all new, unlike The Darkening.Removed hub maps also wouldn't have counted either due to the player just returning to those same maps, compared to The Darkening which is its own level.

The Darkening's main gimmick is the heavy absence of illumination, making the SearchLight necessary to navigate through it. However, the darkness isn't pitch black but it's very dark blue, which allows players to still see without using the SearchLight (Pupae are the major reasons why you need light).

The Darkening was probably the basis of the DarkMatch gametype in Unreal; it was a modified version of DeathMatch where you would start with a SearchLight and the maps were all dark in nature. Only one DarkMatch retail map was made, NightOp, and was based on the Skaarj theme just like The Darkening.DarkMatch and NightOp made it to a Unreal Tournament beta as well as a unlockable mode, however it was removed in later versions.

The map has a SearchLight very close the starting point. It was probably going to be the SearchLight that you had to pick up to navigate through the level but Inoxx decided to add already another SearchLight in Skaarj Generator, making The Darkening's one pointless.

This is the first map in the game since Noork's Elbow (or Cryox if the cut levels are considered) where you fight Mercenaries. They were in ExtremeLab too but you couldn't fight them.

The Skaarj somehow were able to reach the body shield's green level and blue level for their own test subjects during P849's assault in the MotherShip. Now these shielded Skaarj roam the ship in The Darkening.As a reminder, these are Skaarj Berserkers/Lords/Troopers/Infantries with XFX translucent skin+textures plus MeshEnviroMap turned on. The Trooper ones have no boosted stats whatsoever, while the Warrior ones have their health slightly boosted.Green Warriors have higher health (between 410 to 460), Blue ones have around 380 HP and are harder to see (resembling the Invisibility effects). According to a message in ExtremeLab, the Blue level is stronger than the Green one.

The Skaarj Berserker with the IceSkaarj skin appears in this map as the end boss. He is the only proper Skaarj Warrior "boss" in the final version of Unreal - cut level Nexus End also employed Skaarj bosses, same with RTNP's own version of Toxic. Compared to a normal Skaarj Berserker (320 HP), this one has 800 HP. His skin is originally used on IceSkaarj, a unused Skaarj type based on the Warrior's stats but with full immunity to the Frozen damagetype (nitrogen pools). IceSkaarj were used in RTNP's Watcher of the Skies but only appearing in lower difficulties.This Skaarj boss was based on the original boosted Berserker that guarded the core generator in the old Extreme. His tag is "folie", which is French for madness, confirming that the Skaarj boss literally lost his mind due to the shield experiments gone wrong.

The exit to the next map is positioned very wrongly - geographically it leads RIGHT into the previous areas of the MotherShip; even though, this wasn't the original idea Inoxx had in mind for an exit to ExtremeEnd.

The Source Antechamber (ExtremeEnd.unr)

The Skaarj Lord must be defeated in order to press the elevator button.

EndEx has an unused interlude songsection; it lasts very briefly.

This is the only playable map in the game to have a "flight" section where the player is transported from one place to another throughout interpolation points. The Unreal ending scene is done in the same way.

The Source (QueenEnd.unr)

The Source is the last map of the Unreal campaign.

QueenEnd was originally known as just Queen. Similar to VeloraEnd, the "end" in the title just stands for a boss map when it comes to Jeremy War's levels. However, QueenEnd never went beyond being a simple boss level.

For its size and scope, the quantity of enemies that you can fight in this map is very big - 50 Pupae spawn in the boss arena in total!

The map uses warpzones between certain areas: entrance area to the boss arena, escape pod area to the escape pod tunnel.

The Queen appears in this map. Originally, she was going to appear in Soledad as well for a temporary encounter. The Queen was likely the last Unreal creature to be completed; she was also conceived to have a different model according to one of the Crypt textures (having a turtle-like appearance). She was also originally named "Mother Skaarj". The Queen and her lair were planned very early in development.

Earlier versions of the map had the player fighting Skaarj Warriors and Troopers before the Queen would appear. This is seen in one of the Unreal trailers. The fight was likely removed because Skaarj Generator already did fill the spot.

None of the insta-kill triggers in the Queen arena (pit and laser beams) work for the enemies.

The Queen pit's elevator is usually known for not randomly working, remaining at the bottom as a result. Falling down in the pit instantly kills you.

The Queen does NOT teleport to the middle platform.

QueenSong contains an unused battle songsection which was probably used for the Skaarj battle occurring before the Queen appeared. An edited version of this songsection appears in the OST disc.

The Queen arena was originally different. There was no middle platform at all (the beams were still there, their brushes just looked different) and there were going to be floating platforms that helped the player reaching the second floor (before Jumpboots were added in).

The "Super" Jumpboots are just modified default ones with almost infinite charge.

The Source itself IS NOT PART of the Mothership. It's all built underground.

The black void's pit does not insta-kill Pupae if they fall in. There aren't damage triggers at all, you just die because of massive fall damage.

In the Queen arena, if you look above you see a strange cube attached on one of the walls. It's just simply a big brush from the pod area sticking out in the Queen's one.

With the editor, it's possible to see an invisible, subtracted brush (a slope) in the pod area. What is it? Who knows.

The big void area has a weird rectangular room built on one of the exterior walls. It is assumed that Jeremy was going to make there some sort of hangar, which could have been the real exit of the map.